Aaron Dignan: Change The Way You Work

**Aaron Dignan** (0:00)
I mean, there's no such thing as a big company, really. I think the main thing I deal with when folks ask me about doing this at scale is like, there's no such thing as Apple or Amazon, right? Like that's not actually a real thing. There are groups of 150, 300, 500 people that live their whole lives with each other, and just like very rarely interface with other divisions and units. And it's 50 small companies that are just under the same banner with a set of shared principles.
And that's kind of it. And that's their company.

**Shane Parrish** (0:45)
Welcome to The Knowledge Project podcast. I'm your host, Shane Parrish. The goal of this show is to master the best, what other people have already figured out. To do that, I sit down with people at the top of their game to uncover the useful lessons you can learn and apply in life and business.
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Today, I'm speaking with Aaron Dignan. As the founder of The Ready, he helps companies large and small work better. To many of us, work feels broken. While no one sits down and designs the ridiculous processes, they happen. Bureaucracy happens unless you ruthlessly stamp it out, and very few people have an incentive to get rid of it. The result is slow organizations that gradually, and then all at once become uncompetitive and lose their place. Not only that, it's no fun to work there. The problem isn't the people. The problem isn't the lack of communication or no one knowing the corporate values. This episode looks at what's keeping us from doing our best work and what we can do about it.
It's time to listen and learn.
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Work isn't working. What's stopping us from doing our best work?

**Aaron Dignan** (4:28)
Well, I think the problem with work is that most of the way that we work is inherited from the generations that came before us. And the way we work today, when you think about hierarchies and bosses and managers and boxes and lines and Gantt charts and schedules and quarterly plans and budgets, all that stuff came about roughly 80 to 120 years ago. And it came about in the time of the factory floor when we were trying to make sure that size nine shoes fit the same across the country and corn flakes wouldn't kill us. And everything was about reliability and consistency and scale. And so that entire what I call operating system, that way of working was born for that purpose.